"Following up on their acclaimed Thrill Jockey 2004 CD Back Together Again, Drake and Anderson set out to show just how much they'd grown, how beautifully their work together has evolved. Drafting an all-star band consisting of fellow-Chicagoans, the twosome entered John McEntire's Soma Studios and proceeded to record their most relaxed, perfectly balanced date yet. In a discography that has gone from a handful of rare LPs fifteen years ago to a staggering number of discs on various labels today, it may seem hyperbolic to call From The River To The Ocean Fred Anderson's greatest album yet, but the empathy and cohesiveness of the ensemble, coupled with the saxophonist's brilliant, searching improvisations, makes it a ringer."

"Sometimes the most obvious projects -- the ones that are sure to work -- are the ones that keep getting put off. Worst case scenario: they never happen. The notion of recording tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson and drummer Hamid Drake as a duo is something that has been kicked around for years, simply because they play so beautifully together. And of course they've recorded together many times, particularly in recent years, releasing CDs on Okka Disk, Eremite, Delmark, and elsewhere. But always in the company of others. The Anderson-Drake relationship always provides a nucleus for those ensembles. Here, then, for the first time, are Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake: pure, unadulterated nucleus."